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European Day of Languages assembly talk

I did this assembly talk a few years ago. Feel free to use it or adapt it.

Today is
officially the European Day of Languages.

Here is a poem by
Olivia McMahon

Learning a
language

Is like doing a
jigsaw puzzle

Of a million
pieces

With a picture
that keeps changing.

It's like getting
lost in a foreign city without a map.

It's like playing
tennis without a ball,

like being an ant
in a field of grasshoppers.

It's like being an
acrobat with a broken leg,

An actor without a
script,

A carpenter
without a saw,

A storyteller
without a middle or an end.

But then gradually

It's like being
out in the early morning

with the mists
lifting.

It's like a chink
of light under a door,

like finding the
glove you were looking for,

Catching the train
you thought you were going to miss,

Getting an
unlooked-for present,

Exchanging a
smile.

And then one day
it's like riding a bicycle

Very fast
downhill.

*************************************************************

How many languages
are there in the world? Well, it’s hard to know for sure because most languages
are not written down and most are spoken by small numbers of people living in
remote parts of the globe, for example tribes in the Amazon jungle. The best
estimate we have is nearly 7000, of which nearly half are in danger of
extinction. 7000 is a lot of languages
and each one is well adapted to the culture which uses it.

As for the most
widely spoken languages in the world, this depends on how you count up.But if you just measure people who speak a
language as their native tongue: one table suggests that the top 10 are:
Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, Bengali,
Malay and French. By the way, Chinese is a long way ahead with about a billion
speakers.

However, if you
add up the native speakers with those who speak a second language, the table
changes.The top ten are: Chinese,
English, Spanish, Russian, French, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese and Bengali.

If you then look
at the number of countries where languages are spoken the top five are:
English, French, Arabic, Spanish and Russian.

Now, a calculation
has been made as to the most important languages based on number of speakers,
the countries the languages are spoken in, economic influence and prestige, for
example the influence of the literature in the language. The top five come out
as:English, French, Spanish, Russian
and Arabic. I suspect Chinese will soon figure in that list.

Now, why bother to
learn a language if English is the most important language in the world?

Here are ten
reasons, with the most important left to the end.

1.When
you travel abroad, for example on holiday, you’ll be able to talk with people
who can’t speak English. This shows courtesy and respect. remember that only
about 5% of the world population speak English. It’s a myth that you don’t have
to learn other languages because everyone speaks English anyway.

2.You
may need a foreign language for your job. By the way, students with languages
find it easier to get jobs than students with almost any other training.

3.You
may just enjoy learning a language – using the sounds, working out rules and so
on

4.It
will make you seem clever. People seem to be impressed when you can speak more
than one language.On the other hand,
you can feel hopeless when you can’t speak another person’s language.

5.You can
have secret conversations which other people don’t understand

6.Research
shows that learning a language can make you better at learning other subjects.

7.You
can watch films and read in another language.

8.It
helps you learn about other cultures.It’s hard to really get to know another country and people unless you
understand their language.

9.It
makes you understand your own language better.

10.Finally
– and the most important – when you learn another language not only do you
learn about the other country, but it also makes you look at your own country
in a different way; it probably makes you a more tolerant person; it teaches
you to listen to others, communicate better and it broadens your horizons.Someone once said that to learn another
language is to learn another vision of life.You might not be thinking that as you do your French, German or Latin
homework, but as a citizen of Europe and the
world, perhaps learning language, although it can be quite hard, is not a bad
thing at all. The poem by Olivia McMahon said that learning a language is like
being lost in a foreign city, but if you work at it for a long time it becomes,
as she put it, like riding a bike downhill.

This is a great script! I really like the mention of citizens of the world as it's so easy to be focused on just the country we live in. I think it helps young students look beyond themselves and realize they are part of something so much bigger :)

My colleague Tim, an ex teacher, came up with 4 ways teachers can celebrate and share during todays European Day of Language. It's a great article and focuses a bit on how EAL students can collaborate with their peers. Have a little read through if you like: http://bit.ly/edlcelebrate

Thanks again for sharing the script. I'm going to share it with some teacher followers :)

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